Blanchot on sculptor Alberto Giacometti

French philosopher and literary critic Maurice Blanchot on the strange power of Giacometti’s work, and the aim of writing

Alberto Giacometti, Walking Man (1/6), 1960.

When we look at the sculptures of Giacometti, there is a vantage point where they are no longer subject to the fluctuations of appearance or to the movement of perspective. One sees them absolutely: no longer reduced, but withdrawn from reduction, irreducible, and, in space, masters of space through their power to substitute for space the unmalleable, lifeless profundity of the imaginary. This point, whence we see them irreducible, puts us at the vanishing point ourselves; it is the point at which here coincides with nowhere. To write is to find this point. No one writes who has not enabled language to maintain or provoke contact with this point.

Taken from Maurice Blanchot’s essay, ‘Approaching Literature’s Space’ in The Space of Literature (translated by Ann Smock).

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